While vehicle-to-X communication is currently still state of the art, ambient sensors and driver assistance systems based thereon are already known in the prior art and are becoming increasingly widespread. In the course of continuous improvement in information capture, information processing and hence also the reliability of such driver assistance systems, increasing sensor merging is also taking place. By way of example, it is thus first of all possible to use a radar sensor to determine a distance from a vehicle traveling ahead. A stereo camera that is likewise in place can then be used to perform additional distance measurement, for example, that confirms or rejects the distance information ascertained by the radar sensor.
Similar validation of information captured by means of ambient sensors by other ambient sensor information is used for what is known as “target validated braking”, for example, and is known from DE 10 2008 061 301 A1, which is incorporated by reference. In this case, a radar signal is validated by means of a camera signal by virtue of the camera signal confirming that the radar signal is reflected by a vehicle. There is no provision for additional distance measurement by means of a stereo camera. On the basis of this validation by a second sensor, the reliability of the information is comparatively high.
Further merging of different ambient sensors, such as radar sensors, camera sensors, lidar sensors and also a telematic system, which in this case is likewise understood to be an ambient sensor, is described in DE 10 2007 058 192 A1, which is incorporated by reference. A central controller is used to check the respectively nonredundantly captured information from a single sensor by analytically comparing said information with information from another sensor. In this way, it is possible, if need be, to set up information redundancy that forms the basis for safety-relevant action taken in the vehicle control.
Information association of information captured by means of ambient sensors with information captured by means of vehicle-to-X communication is often possible only with difficulty or not at all, however, since these two types of information are usually afflicted with widely different measurement inaccuracies, the vehicle-to-X information usually having the greater measurement inaccuracies. This is caused by the “position”, “speed” and “acceleration” details that the vehicle-to-X information usually comprises being based at least in part on GNSS information, which is naturally comparatively inaccurate. Further problems arising therefrom are the more difficult or impossible association of the currently merged information with the information already merged in a previous cycle, for example in order to ensure object tracking, and the usually different lengths of time of the capture cycles of ambient sensors and vehicle-to-X communication devices.